[Pelham]

Curious to know what effect you predict- as in “for every dollar cut, x-amount of dollars will increase or decrease” to the Treasury.

[JME_FAN]

The point of a dynamic economy is that you cannot predict with any accuracy what will happen in the future. The CBO is attempting to predict how businesses, etc will perform.

The short answer is that the CBO has NEVER been right about anything in its entire history.

So, why do people still cite it as an authority, when the entrenched bureaucrats working there could not find their a$$es with a map and both hands?

[Vigilanteman]

It isn't that simple. One of the more dramatic and often overlooked statistics is labor force participation rate. Everyone working in the economy is generating social security receipts (always) and tax revenue (usually). So even with a lower tax rate (social security rates remain the same), revenue can increase dramatically by making it possible for more people to work.

How much will depend on the aggregate preference of working versus drawing unemployment, social security, etc. There is a supply curve for drawing government payments (transfer payments in the economist's vernacular) just as there is everything else. One well known example is increasing the payment for each extra child born out of wedlock and you have a dramatic increase in illegitimacy.

Liberals don't accept this because they think emotionally, not rationally. But people in the real world (yes, even folks with IQs of 70) will think and behave rationally, for the most part.